ANES 2012 — access and terms: what we could and could not determine

Status: UNRESOLVED. Needs a human to read the data use agreement.

What the 403 was

Every automated request to electionstudies.org returned HTTP 403 Forbidden:

URL Result
https://electionstudies.org/papers-documents/policy-on-access-to-anes-data/ 403
https://electionstudies.org/data-center/ 403
https://electionstudies.org/faq/ 403 (empty response)

This is bot-blocking, not authentication. The pages are publicly readable in a normal browser; the site rejects programmatic fetches. So this is not evidence that the terms are restrictive — it is simply an inability to read them from here. Per the scouting brief, recorded as an open item rather than worked around.

What is known from secondary sources

From search results summarizing ANES policy (not from the DUA itself):

  • ANES public-use data are free but access is gated behind registration — users create an account before downloading.
  • Users must cite ANES data and documentation, and are asked to send citations of published work to ANES for their bibliography.
  • Use of the data to learn the identity of any respondent is prohibited, and users must report any inadvertent identification.
  • A separate, stricter track exists for Restricted-Use Data, handled through ICPSR’s Virtual Data Enclave under a signed Data Use Agreement with IRB documentation. The 2012 Time Series public-use file is not in this category.

What is NOT known

Whether redistribution to a third-party repository is permitted. None of the secondary sources addresses reposting. The registration requirement is itself a complication distinct from GSS’s: even if reuse is liberal, an archive that redistributes the responses removes the registration step that ANES has deliberately put in place, which they may object to on process grounds regardless of licensing.